Question External hard drive wont show up anymore

[ShadaMoon]

I have a 2 tb toshiba canvio hard drive that I bought a couple of months ago that was working fine. I recently lent it to a friend of mine because he was having issues with his macbook and apple support said he needed some extra space to do whatever it was he needed to do. Well when I got back the hard drive it lights but doesn’t show up anywhere. Not even in disk management. The problem comes that one of my usb ports had a power surge recently and I’m not sure if that is the cause of the issue because its not getting enough power or if the usb port is longer 3.0. I also plugged it in to another laptop and the light turned blue instead of white when i plug it into my computer. But it still didn’t show up. So I;m really confused as to what the issue is and couldn’t find any help. So if anyone has any idea and can help me it would be greatly appreciated.

 

[H0PEFU11Y]

I would guess corrupted or static (leaning towards corrupted as I wouldn't think it would still light up if it was static). Neither are good and would mean that the drive would need replacing.

I would check in the BIOS when the hard drive is plugged in and see if it even shows up on there (you'd probably have to go to boot options to see if it showed up or not- though this depends if your PC BIOS does give names to different drives or just decides it based on type).

 

[popatim]

If you feel the drive spinning then see if the drive shows up in device manager, right click on it and select uninstall. Answer yes to remove any associated files.

Then when its all done unplug it's usb for a minute and then plug it back it. it will load drivers for it again. Hopefully thisis just a driver issue.

If the drive isn't spinning anymore then you've got a hardware issue and probably should try to warranty it.

 

[fzabkar]

Does CrystalDiskInfo see the drive? Can you see the drive if you plug it into a USB 2.0 port? USB 2.0 and 3.0 use different wires in the cable.

 

[ShadaMoon]

I would guess corrupted or static (leaning towards corrupted as I wouldn't think it would still light up if it was static). Neither are good and would mean that the drive would need replacing.

I would check in the BIOS when the hard drive is plugged in and see if it even shows up on there (you'd probably have to go to boot options to see if it showed up or not- though this depends if your PC BIOS does give names to different drives or just decides it based on type).

I went into the BIOS and the hard drive did show up there.

If you feel the drive spinning then see if the drive shows up in device manager, right click on it and select uninstall. Answer yes to remove any associated files.

Then when its all done unplug it's usb for a minute and then plug it back it. it will load drivers for it again. Hopefully thisis just a driver issue.

If the drive isn't spinning anymore then you've got a hardware issue and probably should try to warranty it.

I can feel the drive spinning and uninstalled it and plugged it back in but it still didn't show up in explorer.

Does CrystalDiskInfo see the drive? Can you see the drive if you plug it into a USB 2.0 port? USB 2.0 and 3.0 use different wires in the cable.

Plugged it into different ports and it still didn't show up.

 

[fzabkar]

It sounds like BIOS may be detecting the USB-SATA bridge IC rather than the drive behind the bridge.

 

[popatim]

Does it still work in his Mac?

 

[seagate_surfer]

Hi, which operational system is your friend and you using?